Resolutions calling on state and federal officials to diminish the role of standardized tests have been adopted by several local boards of education in the past few months. Educators and teachers' union representatives have expressed concerns about the tests, and parents have said their children in grades three through eight are being subjected to undue stress and tested on materials they haven't been taught.

Now that this year's tests have been administered, educators and parents are wondering what has been learned in the process.

Beth Humphrey, an educator at the Woodstock Art Association Museum and a visiting artist who has taught in Onteora, Kingston and Saugerties elementary schools, is concerned about the impact of testing on the creativity of teachers.

"I come to it as a visiting artist in the schools, and as a parent," Humphrey said. "I've seen a real drop in project-based learning (because of an emphasis on test preparation). It squeezes out the flexibility and creativity that good teachers have been relying on."

Marystephanie Corsones, the Kingston school district's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, disagrees.

"(Testing) helps us know a student's baseline," she said, explaining that educators will use test results to determine what areas of the curriculum will need further development as the state's Common Core curriculum is implemented in coming years. "No student gets a grade based on a New York state assessment."

Student performance on this year's tests will affect 20 percent of a teacher's evaluation, Corsones said. In past years, she said, none of Kingston's teachers were negatively affected by their students' performances on standardized tests.

"Of course, this year, we really don't know," she said.

School districts expect to receive student scores in late July or early August.

Last week, Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, said governments should hold off on plans to link standardized test results with school evaluations.

Weingarten supports accountability but said the test results should not be held against students, schools or teachers until all have shifted to the new standards.

Despite claims that some teachers are "teaching to the test," that's not the case in Kingston, where teachers are encouraged not to spend time on test preparation, Corsones said.

"Our philosophy as a district is if you deliver high-quality instruction, then, in fact, students will do just fine on tests," she said. "What we know and what we've learned is that test prep is not what's going to make students successful. It really is high-quality teaching."

But Kingston has been fortunate to receive grants used for "high-quality professional development" aimed at helping teachers prepare for the new curriculum, Corsones said.

Humphrey, whose child attends Mount Marion Elementary School in Saugerties, said she's noticed "a greater emphasis from my daughter's teacher in getting her to do better on the test. ... It's not just that Johnny's on the line. It's Johnny's teacher and administrator and superintendent."

Humphrey said she doesn't oppose testing, but is concerned about the weight it carries.

"The goal of this shift is to make sure the best teachers are doing the best jobs," she said. "Right now, it seems they are underestimating the ability of teachers to teach what they know and love."

Rondout Valley school district Superintendent Rosario Agostaro has a background in educational testing. He's had a hand in writing state Regents exam questions in earth science and has been trained by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., where he was involved in writing some questions for the eighth-grade national science exam. "I'm not a rookie in the field," Agostaro said.

"What we're seeing -- a couple of things that are giving me angst -- is that children are crying and children are saying the questions are so hard they couldn't answer them," he said.

Agostaro questioned the value of the exams.

"What we need to focus on is our teachers' instructional availability, and probably standardized tests don't give us the data we need to assess that," he said.

"What we don't want to do is to have schools in which we literally study verbatim what's going to be on the assessment," Agostaro said. "If the test doesn't measure instruction somehow, then we're missing the boat."

Even so, he said, "we, as educators, will do what we're asked to do. It doesn't necessarily mean we agree with the direction it's going. ... Are we graduating all of our kids? Absolutely not. Do we need to work on that? Definitely. But how we get there might not be (by continuing in) the direction we're going."

Onteora school district Superintendent Phyllis Spiegel McGill says she and the Board of Education have been vocal about the importance of developing better ways to gauge student achievement by developing the curriculum before beginning testing.

"We're real uncomfortable with the state assessment and with the constant annual assessments," McGill has said of the state's standardized testing.

This year's challenge, Kingston's Corsones said, was that students were tested on Common Core standards, some of which have yet to be released by the state. The change "created a lot of angst" among students and staff, she said. But she said the results will help Kingston's teachers determine their students' strengths and "ascertain what we'll need to stress next year when we implement the Common Core."

"The challenge is that it was a lot of change all at once and not everything was clearly defined right up front," Corsones said. "I do ultimately believe it will bring us in the direction we want to go."